Patterns in Vogue: Rebecca Lobo

In 1997, Michel Comte photographed pro basketball player Rebecca Lobo for Vogue magazine in an evening dress made from a Vogue pattern. The American Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) had had its first game earlier that year, and the New York Liberty forward was featured in a health and beauty portfolio, “Women on the Verge,” on six women in the public eye.

Rebecca Lobo, Vogue, November 1997. Photo: Michel Comte.

The caption reads: “Rebecca Lobo, forward for the New York Liberty, former college basketball star, and Olympic gold medalist, is too tall (six feet four) for off-the-rack women’s clothes and too stylish to be relegated to baggy unisex sweatsuits. Her solution: a custom-made wardrobe. Here, satin evening gown from Vogue Pattern #9400.”

Lobo’s bias evening gown is view C of Vogue 9400 from 1995, made up in silk crepe-backed satin:

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2 thoughts on “Patterns in Vogue: Rebecca Lobo”

It’s interesting that the gown modeled doesn’t quite match the front and back view technical drawings. It seems that Vogue magazine has tweaked, if not drastically changed, the pattern to suit their editorial vision, as they had with some of the patterns in your previous posts on Vogue patterns in Vogue magazine.
I like seeing patterns utilized for a fashion shoot, and I think most sewers have always tweaked or customized patterns to suit their fashion tastes and to suit their bodies, but apart from altering lengths or perhaps eliminating sleeves or pockets I think that changing the patterns too much for an editorial is not really in the spirit of promoting the patterns for their original designs. I wonder how the pattern companies would have felt about it?

I, too, noticed that the dress does not match the pattern view, to the extent that it could be a completely different pattern. If I were a reader who made a trip to the store to buy this pattern, I would have been very frustrated.